This weekend kicks off our local autumn art season. In addition to the Brooklyn Clay Tour providing an array of ceramics-related events (check their calendar for a full listing), art opening receptions of all mediums abound—stay in the ‘hood for sculpture, embroidery, immersive installations, surreal sculptures, and paintings that suspend disbelief.
PLATE PARTY
Calico Gallery | 67 West St., Ste 203
Opening Reception: Friday, September 8 | 7-9pm
RSVP on Facebook
As part of the Brooklyn Clay Tour, Calico presents a pop-up exhibit of commemorative plates, in conjunction with art collective FPOAFM Studios. “PLATE PARTY will feature over 20 artists whom have chosen their favorite artist or inspirational figure to commemorate on a porcelain plate. Images have been drawn, collaged, painted, illustrated, or etched, then permanently transferred onto a plate through a ceramic decal process or laser etching process.”
Jimmy’s Thrift of New Davonhaime
Knockdown Center | 52-19 Flushing Ave
Opening Reception: Friday, September 8 | 6-9pm
If you happened to catch any of artist Azikiwe Mohammed‘s immersive installations at Spring/Break Art Show the past few years, his latest performative installation of a fictional thrift store should not disappoint. The title Jimmy’s Thrift of New Davonhaime “is an amalgamation of the names of the five most densely populated Black cities in America: New Orleans, Detroit, Jackson, Birmingham, and Savannah. Jimmy’s Thrift of New Davonhaime was created to serve as a safe space for Black and Brown people living in America.” The space will be reconstructed into a thrift store that contains found and handmade objects, including tapestries, records, postcards, paintings, lamps, and books. The artist will be “on site daily performing as the thrift store owner, Jimmy, interacting with visitors and collecting contributions of photographs and audio recordings to add to the growing installation. These living archives offer an intimate and nuanced portrait of black lives both contemporary and past.”
Takuji Hamanaka: Weaving Light
Owen James Gallery | 61 Greenpoint Ave., Ste 315
Opening Reception: Friday, September 8 | 6-9pm
RSVP on Facebook
Takuji Hamanaka’s bold yet ethereal collages will be on view; a classically-trained Japanese woodblock printer, he uses block printing techniques and collages the prints to create layers of dimensionality and form. “The dramatic, floating colors and designs also bring to mind stained glass windows, such as those in Chartres Cathedral in France. We see a structure that surrounds and defines the luminous color fields. Whether it is the white highlights or darker recesses, the leadlight glow that emanates from the surface seems to slowly draw us in.”
She Saw The World Brighten and Catch Fire
Point Green Studio | 260 Java Street
Opening Reception: Friday, September 8 | 6-10pm
RSVP on Facebook
Point Green presents patriarchy-fighting embroidery that will whip-stitch you into submission, “inspired by the Ray Bradbury short story, “Embroidery,” which depicts three women embroidering on the eve of the apocalypse.”
House Work
VICTORI + MO | 56 Bogart St
Opening Reception: Friday, September 8 | 6-9pm
RSVP on Facebook
For VICTORI + MO’s season opener, analogue/digital boundary crossing artist Jonathan Chapline has “painted the interior gallery walls electric indigo, a color dominating the background space of many of his paintings. The paintings are presented alongside sculptures arranged on a table, which are representations of the objects depicted within his paintings. The viewer is invited to navigate this voided space with a suspension of disbelief, disembodied between the virtual and the real, where one projects oneself into an alternate reality.” Trippy.
Cheap Cookie and a Tall Glass of Water
Mrs. | 60-40 56th Drive, Maspeth
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 9 | 6-10pm
RSVP on Facebook
Sculpture, surrealism and phantasmagoria. Maspeth gallery Mrs. presents works by Genesis Belanger—whose pieces construct “darkly humorous narratives, riddled with utopian delusion, futility, and isolation, an absurdity of reduction… A Gober-esque porcelain sink, nostalgic of the 80’s, is topped with uncanny ceramic objects such as a banana, an obtuse cigarette and two dismembered fingers holding a cookie. The pallet of these objects are tender at first, then deeply pale and eery. In this world, bodies are objects, and objects become bodies, seamlessly slipping back and forth between the two… The subjects that inhabit this realm, shapeshift between male and female, testing the constructed gender binary.”
And your art-filled weekend wraps up with two closing receptions on Sunday, September 10 in Bushwick. At Tiger Strikes Asteroid (1329 Willoughby Ave #2A), Revealing Reflected Refractions is closing, from 4-6 pm. And next door at Transmitter, they’re having a closing reception from 3-6pm for their most recent show, Portals.